Referral campaigns put the focus on the Advisor, have them appear needy and don’t line up with the foundation of trust-building which is built off of mutually serving intentions.

An introduction to a new client is the result of trust, bottom line. So beginning with the end in mind, when we look at how trust is formed: incrementally over time, we need to give it to get it; a picture emerges that suggests the allowance and acceptance of new introductions would be better served inside a “trusted advising” process.

But what does that look like? Let’s take a look at a client of mine to further understand.

Blake’s original process for asking for referrals was to only ask after the business was done. He would simply ask: “who else do you know that could benefit from the work that we’ve just done together?” Another favourite of his was: “Mr Client, thank you for your business, now that we have the ACME strategy implemented, has...

Earning referrals faster is as easy as having a mindset that is helpful and thoughtful and by ultimately having focus on the overall experience of the client. The experience isn’t just them sitting down you with, it’s everything in entirety that is reflected back on to you.

We’ve all been there, dodging construction or fumbling with parking as we arrive at a meeting wondering why someone just couldn’t have told us ahead of time about this. Surely this didn’t just happen over night?

Recently, I headed to a meeting early one morning, only to have the elevators not work at 8 am for guests, no listing in the directory and their office phones turned off. “Maybe they never wanted to see me I began thinking!” They did, the problem was the lack of foresight by their Administrator and the Advisor not inspecting their entire process. Leaving things to chance is not how practices grow.